Topsail Sundays, page 13
part #2 of Summerhouse Reunion Series
I nodded. “Totally socked in. I’m happy to see that it rolled back out. I’d have hated to have it ruin our sailing outing today.”
“It should be a good day for a race. Sunny and breezy. A near-perfect combination.”
Once we reached the packed sand, we picked up the pace, and our conversation ceased. I enjoyed these silent runs with Ryder. There was something really special about being in tune with a person without the verbal interaction most people depended on. It wasn’t until we’d slowed down for our cooldown that Ryder spoke again.
“I forgot to mention it last night, but I spoke to Jessica yesterday,” Ryder informed me.
“You did? What did she have to say? Is she having fun in Europe?”
“Actually, she’s pretty miserable,” Ryder answered. “The fact that her mother has sold the house she always believed was hers to go back to has her rattled. I tried to get her to see things through her mother’s eyes, but Jessica just doesn’t seem to understand how Carl’s betrayal has upended Carrie’s life. I did remind her about a breakup of her own that caused her to make several changes in her own life, and I think I might have been able to at least crack the door to her entertaining the idea of forgiving her mother and helping her to get on with her life rather than punishing her for the end of her marriage, which was something she had absolutely no control over.”
“I hope she listened to you. I think this whole thing will be a lot easier on Carrie if she feels that Jessica supports her need to rebuild her life on her own terms. Having said that, I sort of get where Jessica is coming from. My niece called me the other day to let me know that my brother-in-law was in the process of donating Kayla’s things in anticipation of selling the house where they raised their girls. My first thought was that it was much too soon to simply be getting rid of Kayla’s things, especially her house, but then I remembered that although she died only two months ago, she’d been gone for a year. After I thought about it a bit, I realized the house, while lived in by both of them, was really Kayla’s house. She picked it out and decorated it. She was the one who made it a home, and with the girls in college, I realized it must be hard for him to be there all alone in that great big place where every square inch must remind him of Kayla.”
“I guess him wanting to sell does make sense, but it must be hard on you.”
“It is. Sophie sent me some photos of the things Mark plans to donate. Clothes and furniture, as well as a few personal items, like some jewelry the girls didn’t want. I live in a tiny apartment, so don’t really have anywhere to put anything, so I decided not to get caught up in the idea that I had to give all of Kayla’s stuff a new home, but there were a few things I wanted, like a locket that matches one I have. They were given to us by our grandmother when we were born. There are photos of us inside. I figured her locket should stay with mine.”
“I agree. That does sound like something special.”
“There was also a ring that was our grandmother’s that my mom gave to Kayla. I figured my mom might want it back. I also asked Sophie to set aside all Kayla’s photos. They meant a lot to her, and they mean a lot to me. I do wish I was there to look through things, although if I was, I’m sure it would be a highly emotional experience for me, and I might end up making it harder on Mark and the girls. I honestly wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that Mark intentionally did this when he knew I was otherwise occupied.”
“It’s probably just a coincidence,” Ryder said.
“Maybe, but maybe not. I’m afraid I made things harder on Mark than they needed to be. I went a little crazy trying to fix something that was never going to be fixed, and I suppose I took my rage at the world out on him, who, in my mind, should have been doing more.”
“I’m sure Mark understands. After speaking to Jessica, I got the feeling she understood as well. It is true that after Carl left, Carrie went totally off the deep end, and it is true that the result of her tantrum was to act in such a manner that she pushed Jessica away. But when I suggested that she reopen the line of communication between herself and her mother, she seemed to be open to the idea. She even hinted that she might try calling Carrie today with the idea of talking to her rather than just yelling at her.”
I reached out and took Ryder’s hand in mine. “You’re a good brother and a good uncle. I wish I had someone like you to help me through my own crazy behavior after Kayla’s accident.”
When we reached the spot where we usually each went our own way, we paused.
“I’ll see you this afternoon,” Ryder said.
“I’ll be there. I know everyone will be getting together for dinner at the beach, but maybe we can head over to your place after. I promise not to fall asleep again.”
Ryder smiled before leaning forward and kissing me gently on the lips. “I’d like that.” He turned and headed toward the boathouse while I jogged off toward the summerhouse.
I arrived back at the house just as a car I didn’t recognize pulled up. I headed toward the dark SUV to see who had shown up so early in the morning. I half-expected to find that the driver was lost and had pulled up to the wrong house. What I found instead was Nora’s oldest son.
“Denver?”
“Kelly. Good to see you.” He stepped out of the open door and wrapped me in a hug. “It’s been a while.”
“A long while.” I hugged him back. “Was Nora expecting you?”
He shook his head. “I need to talk to her, and I wasn’t sure how receptive she’d be to what I have to say, so I decided to take the early ferry over and talk to her in person.”
“Well, I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to see you. I don’t know if she is up yet—I’ve been out running—but come on in, and we’ll find out.”
As it turned out, Carrie and Nora were both up and having coffee on the deck. As I predicted, Nora was thrilled to see Denver, although her smile faded a bit when he suggested that she get dressed so they could go for a walk to talk privately.
“What do you think that’s all about?” Carrie asked me when Denver and Nora left for a walk down the beach.
“I have no idea,” I answered. “He seemed to have something on his mind. Something serious, if his somewhat stern tone is any indication.”
Carrie frowned. “I hope he isn’t here with bad news. I hope everyone is okay.”
Until Carrie said as much, it never occurred to me that Denver might be here to deliver bad news about his father or one of his siblings. “Yeah, it does seem that there must be something pretty serious going on for him to come all the way over to the island so early in the morning. I would think a casual conversation could have been accomplished via the phone, or at least later in the day.”
“I’m sure everything is fine,” Carrie said, although she didn’t sound at all convinced.
“He did smile when he saw me, and he gave me a big hug,” I reported. “If he was here with really bad news, like a death or injury, he would have just gotten right to it. Wouldn’t he?”
She refilled her coffee mug from the pot. “I don’t know. I’m sure nothing really horrible has happened. If it had, I think we would have known.”
I really hoped that was true.
Carrie and I spent the next thirty minutes fretting and worrying until we heard Sam’s Harley in the drive, and Quinn breezed in, bringing a bit of common sense with her.
“Of course, nothing is seriously wrong,” she said, after pouring her own mug full of coffee. “If something really bad had happened, Denver would have called one of us so we would be ready to support Nora after he broke the news to her.”
“Yeah, that does sound like something Denver would do,” Carrie agreed. “The boy is very logical. He’s a linear thinker in many ways. He sees a problem, analyzes it, and then puts into play everything he will need to either solve the problem or minimize the fallout if solving it isn’t a possibility. Quinn is right. If someone had died or been seriously injured, he would have wanted to give at least one of us a heads-up. He would also have wanted to be sure that at least one of us would be here. Chances are he just needed to talk to his mother about something and, being the busy man that he is, early on Sunday morning was the best opportunity.”
I hoped Quinn and Carrie were right, but I had to admit that Nora had looked scared when Denver insisted they take a walk.
Luckily, we didn’t have to wait long to find out what was going on. Twenty minutes after Quinn showed up, Nora and Denver returned. Denver headed out to the front porch to make a few calls while Nora came out onto the deck to fill us in.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“Everything is fine. It seems Denver spoke to Matt, who filled him in on what was going on between us. Denver is the sort who isn’t comfortable with letting things work themselves out. He is more of a man of action, and I guess after he talked to Matt, he was genuinely concerned for our relationship, so he came up with the idea of kidnapping us.”
“Kidnapping?” I asked.
“Well, not really,” Nora clarified. “But he did rent us a beach house up near Mendocino, and he is insisting that Matt and I agree to spend a week there. Just the two of us. He wants us to work out whatever we need to, and he says he won’t take no for an answer. I tried to tell him that I had plans to go camping with the three of you, but he was quite adamant. Matt is already there and is expecting me to join him today.”
“You should go,” Carrie said. “Your marriage is a lot more important than a camping trip, and we can postpone that until next week anyway.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “You should go. This is important. Denver went to a lot of trouble to arrange this, and if he was able to convince Matt to take a week off work, he must be taking this seriously as well. There is no way you can choose your friends over Matt. He has to come first, no matter what.”
Nora smiled. “Thank you for your support. And you are, of course, right. I need to start putting Matt first in my life, and this trip is a good way to show him I want to do that. I’m going to head upstairs to pack. Denver wants to drop me off in Mendocino and get back to the Bay by the end of the day, so I really shouldn’t keep him, but I do intend to come back so we can have our memorial, and I will text you to let you know how things are going.”
After Nora left, Carrie went up to her suite, and Quinn announced that she was going to take a nap, so I headed to my own suite to shower and change. I turned on the shower, stripping off my clothes while the water warmed up. Before stepping in, I put out a hand to check for water temperature and found it cold. I waited another half minute and then turned the water off. I didn’t notice that anyone had been washing clothes or running the dishwasher. Even if everyone else living in the house had showered already, the water heater shouldn’t be totally out. Perhaps the pilot light had gone out. That had happened every now and then when I’d lived here as a kid. Of course, the owner might have replaced the old heater, but it wouldn’t hurt to check. I pulled on a robe and went downstairs. After stopping off in the kitchen for a lighter, I headed to the back stairway that led to the basement space that housed the heating unit, the water heater, and, when I was a kid, a few random boxes with discarded items my mom hadn’t had the heart to set out with the garbage.
When I arrived in the basement, I found it much the same as it had always been. As I’d thought, the pilot light on the water heater was out, so I lit it and turned it up to high. Once the water had heated, I’d need to remember to come back down and turn the heat down somewhat, but I wanted to shower right away, and the quickest means of achieving that goal seemed to be the best option.
I had just turned to leave when I noticed there was a stack of old newspapers on the floor. Dad had saved his newspapers for fire starter after he’d read them, and by the look of the old editions, it appeared as if the newspapers currently occupying space there were indeed the ones he had left. I plucked one from the top of the pile, dated July 1998. I dug down a bit, intentionally looking for July 1995. It took some work, but eventually, I found what I was looking for. There were missing issues that Dad probably had used for fire starter, but every third or fourth newspaper had managed to avoid the fire pit. I wasn’t sure what it was I was looking for, but my intuition told me it wasn’t a bad idea to take a look to see what I might find.
I looked through three of four papers without finding anything noteworthy. Summers on the island had always been busy, with a lot of events going on almost every day of the week. I was about to abandon my search for something relevant when I came across a photo on the front page of the July 10, 1995, issue: a photo taken at a concert that had been held on the beach. My parents hadn’t allowed Kayla and me to go because the event was designed for an older crowd, and my parents knew there would be drinking and probably drug use. In fact, no one from our group of friends had attended as far as I knew, which was why I was shocked to see Peggy’s adorable smile in the crowd.
“Oh my God,” I said out loud as I noticed who was standing next to her with his arm around her shoulders. “Peggy went to the concert with Beavis.”
By the time I made it back upstairs, waited for the water to heat, showered and dressed, and made it back downstairs, Carrie was in the kitchen getting the food ready to take to the beach. She was dressed and hadn’t mentioned the cold water, so I assumed she’d showered last night, a pattern I’d mainly picked up since we’d been living in the same dwelling.
“Look what I found when I went down to the basement to relight the pilot on the water heater.” I pushed the newspaper in front of her.
“What am I looking at?”
I pointed to Peggy in the crowd.
She raised a brow. “Peggy.” She picked up the newspaper. “This must have been taken just a few days before she went missing.”
“Eight days. It was taken eight days before she went missing. I read the article, and it turns out that is the concert we all wanted to go to, but none of our parents would allow us to attend.”
“I remember now. I was really mad.” Carrie frowned. “If Peggy was able to talk her parents into letting her go, I wonder why she never mentioned it.”
“Check out the guy with his arm around her shoulder.”
Carrie took a closer look. “I don’t recognize him.”
“Back then, Quinn and I referred to him as Beavis because he was one half of a very annoying team of men who acted like juveniles who stalked us during the Perfect Tan Surfing Competition. I’ve since learned that Beavis was actually Wilson Montgomery.”
Carrie narrowed her gaze and looked more closely. “Now that you say it, I do see the resemblance. I had no idea that Peggy knew Wilson Montgomery. She never mentioned it to me.”
“To me, either. Peggy was being really secretive that summer. We knew she had a thing for Dusty Roberts, which is why we all assumed that she was with him on the day she disappeared, but what if she had more than one fling going? What if she was actually with Wilson? We know he was on the island because he was spending so much time irritating Quinn and me. I never saw Wilson and Peggy together, but we do have that photo of the girl who we suspect might have been Peggy at the surf competition. I assumed she was there to see me and Quinn, if the girl wearing the hat even was Peggy, but if she was there to see us, why the disguise, and why didn’t she come over to say hi?”
“You think she was there to see Wilson?”
“I suspect she might have been. She is clearly with him at the concert, which was held on July 10th. She disappeared on July 18th. What if he took her to the concert and then moved on to his next conquest? What if Peggy wasn’t ready to let him go, so maybe she followed him to see who he’d replaced her with? Maybe she saw him following me and Quinn around and somehow blamed us for stealing her man. Maybe that’s why she didn’t come up to us to say hi, and maybe that’s why instead of joining us at the beach after her brother dropped her off there, she took off on her own.”
“So, what happened to her?” Carrie asked.
“At first, I thought Dusty was responsible for Peggy’s disappearance, but when I found out about the art link, I changed my mind and put the blame on this man who calls himself Moon. But what if art wasn’t the link? What if it was Wilson? He was such a dork. There is no way he could get a girl on his own charm, so what if he forced the issue and basically kidnapped whomever he set his eyes on?”
“Kidnapped them and then what? Killed them?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe he kidnapped them, but then again, maybe he just held them hostage. Sam said that Veronica was healthy and tanned and showed no sign of abuse when she was found, yet she also never came home or contacted anyone. We came up with the idea that maybe she had been forced into a cult of some sort, where she had free rein to walk around and get sun and exercise but couldn’t leave. What if the place she actually was kept was on Montgomery Island?”
Carrie frowned. “I guess that sort of makes sense. The place is a virtual fortress. No one who isn’t invited ever goes there. I guess if Wilson brought girls to that island and then didn’t let them leave, no one would know except his father and his father’s employees. Maybe we should tell Sam what you suspect.”
“I will. Later. After the race. He is probably already at the marina, and I don’t want to have this conversation with him in front of the others, especially when I don’t actually have any evidence of any of it. Even if I can convince Sam I have a decent theory, I’m not sure he’ll be able to do anything about it without some sort of evidence, but at least he can keep an eye on Wilson while he’s here on Shipwreck Island.”
Carrie headed into the laundry room, returning a minute later with a basket for the food.
“I spoke to Jessica,” she volunteered.
“Did you? How’d that go?” I hoped the conversation she’d had with Ryder had helped the situation.
“It went fine. The reason she called was to make sure I planned to move all her stuff from the house and not to give any of it away until she had a chance to look through it. I told her I planned to have her clothes and furniture moved to the condo and to rent a storage closet in town for items that might not fit there. I figured that way she could go through everything and decide what to do with it. Carl has a large garage, so I imagine that anything that she wants to keep that won’t fit into her new room can be stored there.”
